pelecaniform (order Pelecaniformes), any of the relatively large and diverse group of aquatic birds that share the common characteristic of webbing between all four toes. The order Pelecaniformes conventionally contains six families: Anhingidae (anhingas or snakebirds), Phalacrocoracidae (cormorants), Phaethontidae (tropic birds), Fregatidae (frigate birds), Sulidae (gannets and boobies), and Pelecanidae (pelicans).

Although this article observes the traditional taxonomic structure, the taxonomic relationships between those families are in flux. The most widely accepted alternate classification puts the pelicans in the Pelecaniformes with herons and egrets (family Ardeidae) and ibises and spoonbills (family Threskiornithidae), along with the hammerhead (Scopus umbretta) and the shoebill (Balaeniceps rex). In that classification, the anhingas, the cormorants, the frigate birds, the gannets, and the boobies are placed in their own family, Suliformes, and the tropic birds are also placed in their own family, Phaethontiformes.

General features

All pelecaniforms are relatively large birds: they range in length from about 40 cm (about 16 inches), excluding the elongated central tail feathers, in the white-tailed tropic bird (Phaethon lepturus) to 1.8 metres (6 feet) in the Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus).

In terms of their way of life, the pelecaniform birds fall into four adaptive groups: the frigate birds are long-winged masters of piracy and aerial pursuit of surface-living marine prey; the tropic birds and boobies are wide-ranging flyers that capture prey underwater by plunging from a height; the pelicans are large, large-billed, long-necked, buoyant birds that fish mostly by reaching down while swimming at the surface; and the cormorants and anhingas are heavy-bodied, long-necked, underwater swimmers, respectively pursuing and lying in wait for their prey below the surface. The anhingas are largely confined to fresh water; pelicans and cormorants occur in both freshwater and marine habitats; and the other groups are entirely marine.

Importance to humans

Most pelecaniform birds are of rather little significance to humans, but the guano (excrement) of cormorants, boobies, and pelicans is an important fertilizer. Exploitation of old accumulations of guano reached its peak in the mid-19th century, and since then only the current production of guano has been available in most areas, but even this provides a substantial resource where the bird populations are large. There were an estimated 18 million guano birds on the coast of Peru early in the 1960s. Of these, about 15 million were guanay cormorants (Phalacrocorax bougainvillii), and the remainder were Peruvian boobies (Sula variegata) and brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis). The harvest of guano at that time amounted to about 180,000 tons per year. The guano birds in the area feed largely on the Peruvian anchovy, and, now that this fish is directly exploited on a large scale for fish meal and fish oil, guano-producing birds have declined to fewer than five million animals. In Walvis Bay, Namibia, artificial platforms have been constructed in coastal lagoons and on an offshore reef, greatly facilitating the collection of guano.

Some pelecaniforms are thought to compete with humans for fish. Cormorants are often accused of reducing sport fish populations, which engenders a strong negative backlash by anglers in both Europe and North America. Typically, cormorants are convenient scapegoats for poor fishing due to other causes. Increasingly, however, they have a negative impact on the fish populations of aquaculture ponds in the southeastern United States. Conversely, cormorants are used by fishermen in some countries (such as China and Japan) to catch fish, which they retrieve to a waiting boat; a collar prevents the cormorants from swallowing the fish for themselves.

Pelicans, feeding on fish from inland and coastal waters, are among the animals whose diet tends to ensure that they will accumulate residues of insecticides (especially DDT) in their bodies. Among the physiological effects of these substances on birds are changes in calcium metabolism that result in their laying eggs with abnormally thin shells or no shells at all; these eggs usually break before hatching. These effects prevented the successful reproduction of brown pelicans during the early 1970s on the coasts of California and the Gulf of Mexico in the United States, and their populations became endangered as a result. Since the ban on DDT went into effect in the United States at the end of 1972, brown pelicans have been able to rebound in substantial numbers.

Distribution and abundance

Pelecaniform birds occur all over the world except in parts of the interior of North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, in the high Arctic, and in most of Antarctica. Two groups, the tropic birds and frigate birds, are essentially confined to the tropics; the boobies, pelicans, and anhingas are widespread in the tropics but also penetrate far into the temperate zones; and cormorants breed from the Equator to the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Peninsula.

The tropic birds are the most pelagic (free-flying over open ocean) of the pelecaniforms and can be seen even in the most unproductive central parts of tropical seas. Some boobies and frigate birds are found far out at sea, but most of them return to land to roost at night. Pelicans, cormorants, and anhingas do not venture far from land but may commute some distance between roosting or breeding places and their feeding grounds.

Natural history

Reproduction

The breeding of pelecaniform birds is essentially restricted to places free of mammalian predators. Tropic birds, boobies, and frigate birds typically breed on oceanic islands or on small islets and stacks off continental coasts. Where man introduced predators (such as cats) to isolated islands, pelecaniforms and other marine birds were often eliminated from their traditional breeding grounds. On Ascension Island and St. Helena in the South Atlantic, for example, tropic birds, frigate birds, and boobies, which used to breed in large numbers on the main islands, have either been exterminated or have been forced to confine their nesting to sites on small offshore islets. Pelicans and cormorants are not normally found on islands far from continental land but breed on islands in lakes or offshore or in other protected sites such as trees standing in water or on cliffs. Anhingas breed in trees or bushes close to the sheltered waters where they prefer to feed.

Pelecaniform breeding, whether on the ground or in trees, is typically colonial, apparently because of the scarcity of safe places. If they are to breed at all, all the birds of an area must crowd into the available space. In practice, most colonies have a fairly definite upper limit of density determined by the distance that an incubating bird can reach out to repel intruders. Nests of the gannet (Morus bassanus) have an average density of about 1 per square metre (about 0.84 per square yard); those of the guanay cormorant average about 3.5 per square metre (about 2.9 per square yard).

In some species, colonial breeding has become obligatory, and single pairs or small groups do not breed successfully. Other species breed colonially only where there is a shortage of space for nesting. The masked booby (Sula dactylatra), for example, breeds in dense colonies on islets off Ascension Island but in dispersed patterns on Christmas Island (Pacific). Breeding in a number of species is normally dispersed; the red-footed cormorant (Phalacrocorax gaimardi) of South America, for instance, often nests on cliffs where only scattered sites are available. Similarly, tropic birds nest in holes or crevices in cliffs or under the shelter of rocks or bushes. The sites are thus normally well dispersed, and in some places there is intense competition for them.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.